The demise of storage cards. I don’t want it. I don’t like it.

Yeah, yeah. Cloud storage. Bla bla bla. I’m one of those annoying people who actually prefers having a massive 32GB microSD card in my phone. Sure, if my phone goes missing I’ve lost everything, but I’ve got something physical and heck … I just don’t like change sometimes.

Many manufacturers are pushing cloud storage. Buy yourself a new phone and you’ll probably get some inclusive Dropbox storage or Google will throw some Google Drive space at you. When you’re on WiFi your pictures will magically go up to the cloud and everything is stored safely. Videos too.

However, despite streaming music and movie services, despite cloud-based apps and better mobile connectivity, people still seem to want 16GB or 32GB handsets. Sometimes more. Indeed, phone manufacturers are doing away with microSD cards on many phones and merely offering handsets with different on-board storage capacity.

Take the new iPhone 5C 8GB that was announced the other day. Added to the 5c family it now means you have an increased choice of storage – 8GB, 16GB or 32GB. There’s no microSD cards to be found obviously, and the same can be said for handsets like the Nexus 5.

We’ve heard various reasons for the demise of the microSD card slot on some smartphones. A lack of space is usually cited as a major driver as devices get slimmer. If you can simply solder a microSD card onto the main board it’ll take up less space than having the spring-loaded microSD card slot and associated opening in the outer shell etc.

However, there’s a definite hike in pricing that I spotted the other day.

Compare that to a microSD card. I had a quick fish around Amazon and stuck to the same Sandisk branded microSD cards.

Right now an 8GB microSD £8.62. A 16GB microSD is £16.79 (£8.17 more for 8GB extra) and, for reasons I can’t explain, a 32GB microSD actually costs less than the 16GB version at £15.28.

So, we appear to have Apple charging £40 for an 8GB uplift while Moto are charging £30.

For 16GB extra Apple charge £80 in this example while Google are charging £40 for the same.

Meanwhile, if we still had the option of microSD cards in these phones we could be paying …. well, a lot less. £15.28 for 32GB of storage and the sheer fact that I can boost storage when I need without having to buy a whole new phone.